Mystery missile? Pentagon, NASA experts say it was a plane

Mystery missile: Pentagon and NASA experts say the mysterious plume off southern California Monday was probably made by a jetliner and not by some mystery missile.

By
John Antczak, Associated Press /
November 11, 2010

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This video frame grab provided by KCBS/KCAL shows what could be a missile launched off the California coast, Monday, Nov. 8. Pentagon and NASA experts now say the contrail formed by what appeared to be a mystery missile likely came from a jetliner.

AP Photo/KCBS/KCAL

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Los Angeles

The Pentagon and NASA experts have determined that a billowing contrail seen streaking into the skies above Southern California was likely caused by an airliner and not a missile.

The phenomenon recorded Monday evening by a TV news helicopter created a media sensation and a vapor trail of commentary across the Internet about the possibility of a secret missile firing. But the military insisted it knew of no rockets launched in the area.

Defense Department spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said Wednesday that officials were satisfied it was an airplane contrail distorted by camera angle, winds and other environmental factors including a setting sun.

At Langley Research Center, Minnis and colleague Doug Spangenberg analyzed a sequence of infrared images of the area collected between 5 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. Monday by GOES-11, a geostationary operational environmental satellite.

At 5:30 p.m., "suddenly there is contrail extending horizontally from the left side of the image ... that bends toward the (northeast) pointing directly at Catalina Island," Minnis said in an e-mail to the AP.

The contrail had to have started 15 to 45 minutes earlier and become quite wide to be visible to the satellite, he said.

Minnis accounted in his analysis for earlier and later contrails, conditions that would cause a contrail to persist, movement of the contrail, and nearby clouds.

Missile and satellite launches are routine along the California coast.

The area of ocean perceived as the seeming liftoff point Monday night is in the vicinity of a Navy ocean range where missiles are often launched from vessels, platforms and San Nicolas Island.

Up the coast is Vandenberg Air Force Base, where satellites are lofted into polar orbit and intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched on unarmed test flights to targets thousands of miles away in the Pacific Ocean. Three ICBMS were launched between June and September.

Many of these launches are invisible to the metropolitan area, shrouded by the layer of moist marine air that often rolls in from the Pacific. Others are lost in the brightness of daytime.

But launches on very clear nights or at twilight sometimes trigger numerous calls to media or authorities reporting unusual sky sightings from hundreds of miles away, even from neighboring states.

No such spontaneous public response occurred Monday night in the nation's second-largest city, suggesting that the image captured by the airborne camera was not apparent to ground observers.